101950-more-content-updates-thanks-but-no-thanks-how-about-fixing-bugs-first-please-pretty-please
Content ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- You realize Content Devs and Devs that fix bugs 2 separate teams right, plus there are a ton of bug fixes coming, and that BG was in development before release. | |} ---- You did it! | |} ---- ---- Likely no one is removed from the bug fixing process. This is a balance all software development shops have to address. But not all people are efficient at fixing all bugs either. When there is some area of the code I know really well, I'm the guy they come to for squashing bugs. If it makes sense, I take it on. When I'm put on stuff that is not my area of expertise, it slows everything way down. | |} ---- And yet that very report still has them as recomend to buy. | |} ---- ---- Expected returns of 36% are not looking too pretty? Looks like NCSoft is actually doing pretty well all things considered. 216bn korean Won is around 210 million USD.. That's really not all that bad. As for W*, even missing an entire quarter it's forecast to be about as profitable as Lineage 2. Not all that bad really, and an estimated revenue of 50 million USD for 3 quarters? even at the lowest of those forecasts; if it could be sustained, it would be a revenue of ~ 50 million USD / yr. Taking a quick average and using that puts W* around 75 million / yr . More than likely it will be closer to ~60 million USD / yr. That's pretty respectable. Plus remember, these analystis are: "The research analysts who prepared this report (the “Analysts”) are registered with the Korea Financial Investment Association and are subject to Korean securities regulations. They are neither registered as research analysts in any other jurisdiction nor subject to the laws and regulations thereof. Opinions expressed in this publication about the subject securities and companies accurately reflect the personal views of the Analysts primarily responsible for this report" | |} ---- No it wasn't. It was from an Analyst company guessing about what is going on with GW2 and Wildstar. | |} ---- You realise that adding new content always results in more new bugs, that bog down the 'bug team' that's still at work on the current bugs? Adding new content is basically guaranteed to slow down fixing any current outstanding bugs (for example the missing quest name bug that still isn't fixed, the weird circuits jiggling strength around when crafting bug, etc). The strain patch broke loads of crap (hell, the mini-patch BoE equip warning fiasco was a disaster and felt like no one even bother to test it before live) - I'm sure this one will break a tonne of stuff as well... things which the bug team will probably have to prioritise over less recent issues. I'd rather see a bigger bug fix team myself AND the new content, but eh, I'm guessing they aren't going to hire more people just to work on debugging their drops after launch. | |} ---- Of course this would be Idea, but it is what it is. And yeah even bug fixes cause more bugs. Haha | |} ---- ---- ---- You are both right... and both wrong. Yes, new content updates brings a lot of bugfixes. And yes, there are different teams working on content and bugfixes. But the problem is all the new content has to fit into the existing game, and there can easily be a lot of unexpected things going on. Take adding a new class, for instance. One thing is having to create the actual class, skills, AMPs and all that. But they will also have to rebalance every single existing class to match the new one. Even if they get most of this perfect right away, there will be issues. Maybe your healer has a slightly less healing now, to compensate for the new class. This won't be an issue for most people, but it could be a huge deal if you built your character around how much healing you could do. The more healing you do, the less defense you need. So if they reduce the healing a bit, they are forcing you to get more defenses otherwise. So what if they don't improve your defense-skills to compensate for the reduced healing? Now you suddenly have a character that was fragile at first, and are now nearly unplayable. All because they reduced a healing skill just a bit. That's the point. Every content-update brings in a whole lot of new bugs, and I've seen far more bugs now than I did before the update. This isn't just my personal opinion. I base in on how many bugs I notice, as well as how many bug-tickets I report. So yes, there are different teams working content updates and bug fixes, but they still have to work tgoether towards a common goal: To make the game as great as possible. And that's the issue here. I do want more content, obviously, but more content updates will bring in more bugs. That means the bugfixers already have a lot to do, and they will get even more to do once the next update is out the door. That means more angry fans, which in return means even more angry people on the forums. No one wants that. So instead of putting out updates frequently, how about making sure they are polished and ready for the game? Have them on the test-server longer and clear out as many bugs there as possible, before they finally go live. If that means less content updates early on... then so be it. Quality over quantity. Heck, why not combine content update three and four into a single one and "skip" the next one? That way they can polish those two updates better and reduce the chance of more bugs. That won't be a problem if the updates are already done, as some of you say. | |} ---- ---- The fact of the matter is that at some point, whether it was post-launch or in beta, the dev teams or some higher level of management made the decision to prioritize development of that battleground over, say, stuff like the /follow exploit. You know, that thing that completely invalidated the need to aim in PvP and had been known about since the first large-scale closed beta. If that wasn't a five-second fix for any old developer I can't even imagine what kind of insanity Wildstar's code base must be. At some point the dev team decided that a new battleground should take priorty over something that completely ruined and imbalanced PvP that could've been fixed with 10 mintues of effort and testing. Just think about it. That's saying nothing of the more complex bugs like the inventory / currency disappearing and hit detection on slopes not functioning. Those are things which should've been taken care of in alpha, let alone beta. The fact that these issues still aren't receiving any attention and that customer support is flatly refusing to assist people with them is complete nonsense. Spending all your effort releasing new content, which itself is bugged to the extent that I can't imagine an internal QA tester spent more than five minutes with it, while ignoring them is the most ludicrously cavalier attitude I've ever seen a developer take towards their game. I don't really think anyone is sticking around to do 20 man dailies and ... more dailies. That barely qualifies as a content patch, and it put the game into a far less stable state than it was at launch. Not only did they not do just one or the other, they actually went backwards on one and did next to nothing for the other. That's not the direction they should be going. If it means they need to slow down their development cycles to actually invest time into fixes and testing then people will learn to deal with it. Other MMOs have proven that time and time again. Most people will be more satisfied with a few working features than a ton of broken ones. Oh well, maybe bringing their publisher less money than their decade-old F2P title will make them wake up a bit if that financial forecast holds true. Or maybe Sabotage will just delete everyone's characters when they log in or something. That seems like something Carbine would launch a patch with. | |} ----